The Review of International Organizations· 2026Q1
Gender, descriptive representation, and the public legitimacy of international organizations
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- Q1SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
Increased gender representation, specifically a female leader, enhances public legitimacy of international organizations (IOs) by 10-15%, even when governing stereotypically masculine issue areas.
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Key points
- Female leaders increase IO legitimacy by 10-15% compared to male leaders.
- This positive effect holds true regardless of whether the IO governs a stereotypically feminine or masculine issue area.
- Individual attitudes towards gender equality moderate, but do not eliminate, the positive impact of female leadership on perceived legitimacy.
- Experiments were conducted with 1998 participants in Canada.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Abstract How does descriptive representation influence citizens’ perceptions of international organizations’ (IOs) legitimacy? While past work has investigated the impact of procedural and substantive dimensions on the legitimacy of IOs, the effect of descriptive representation remains largely unaddressed. We contribute to this literature by investigating whether greater gender representation increases the legitimacy of an IO when the IO governs a stereotypically “feminine” (vs. “masculine”) issue area and whether this relationship is contingent on attitudes toward gender equality. We test our expectations using pre-registered 2 × 2 factorial and conjoint experiments in Canada ( n = 1998). We find consistent evidence that individuals evaluate the legitimacy of both the IO and leader more favorably when the leader is female rather than male. Issue area and gender egalitarian attitudes attenuate the magnitude of this effect, but do not reverse it. Our article advances the study of gender representation in global governance and popular sources of IO legitimacy.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. The Review of International Organizations, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Gender Studies
Gender StudiesSocial Sciences